Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality

by Aitken, Jonathan

  Margaret Thatcher bided her time while the media row about Keith Joseph smouldered on for a month’s worth of bad headlines. His embarrassment emboldened Ted Heath to reshuffle the shadow cabinet. But the Leader’s confidence that his position had been strengthened was undermined by the parliamentary reaction to his new appointments.

  If Heath had brought in some fresh faces from the right of the party, or promoted Margaret Thatcher, he might have calmed the murmurings against him at least for a while. But Edward du Cann, who was exercising an increasing influence as Chairman of the 1922 Committee, refused to serve in the shadow cabinet. The only two newcomers invited to join it were Nick Scott and Tim Raison, both regarded as left of centre Heathites. Their appointments increased the grumblings from the right.

  Before the reshuffle, Margaret Thatcher was tipped in the press to become Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. Heath did not want to put her in such an important role. In an attempt to take her down a peg, he did not assign a departmental portfolio to her. Instead, he made her the number two spokesman under Robert Carr. He was a colourless figure, who had served as Home Secretary with decency but without distinction. Unlike his new deputy, he was no match as a debater for the Labour Chancellor, Denis Healey. This gave Margaret Thatcher her opportunity to shine.

  Her first outing at the despatch box in her new role for the opposition was in the Budget debate, exactly as it had been after her appointment as number two to Iain Macleod eight years earlier. She won cheers from the Conservative back-benchers for her entertaining digs at Labour’s Treasury ministers. After being congratulated on her appointment by Labour’s Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the multi-millionaire Harold Lever, she got a good laugh (not least from him) by responding that she could never hope to rival his expertise on ‘the four ways of acquiring money, to make it, to earn it, to marry it, and to borrow it. He seems to have experience of all four’.1

  Later in her speech she had a lively clash with Denis Healey, who she taunted with a newspaper clipping about his new house in Sussex. This reported him as saying ‘I never save. If I get any money I go out and buy something for the house’.2 He not only protested too much at this slur on his reputation for prudence, and noticeably omitted to mention his country-house purchase. To which she retorted: ‘I am delighted that we have got on record the fact that the Chancellor is a jolly good saver. I know that he believes in buying houses in good Tory areas.’3

  Winning an exchange with Healey, the Labour government’s most flamboyant debater, was a good start for Margaret Thatcher in the high profile Budget debate. At a time of low morale for the Conservative Party she raised the spirits of her back-benchers with her attacking speech. Some of them started muttering about the need to take her more seriously as a leadership candidate. Once again, she had seized her moment as an effective parliamentary debater. She backed this up with some impressive performances on the early stages of the Committee on the Finance Bill.

  A few days later she seized a far more important moment. On 21 November she was working in her room at the House on the Finance Bill when the beleaguered Keith Joseph came in to see her. ‘I am sorry, I just can’t run’, he told her. ‘Ever since I made that speech the press have been outside the house. They have been merciless. Helen [his wife] can’t take it, and I have decided that I just can’t stand.’4

  Margaret Thatcher responded, ‘If you’re not going to stand, I will, because someone who represents our viewpoint has to stand’.5 Later that evening, she returned to Flood Street and told her husband she had decided to run for the leadership. ‘You must be out of your mind’, she claimed he replied. ‘You haven’t a hope.’6 Denis’s account of his response was, ‘Heath will murder you’.7

  These versions are suspect. Both Thatchers were viewing the rising tide of party support for her more positively than their later stories suggest. Speculation among Tory MPs that she could be a serious and credible leadership candidate had been around for several weeks. It rose sharply with the fall in Keith Joseph’s stock among his colleagues, climbing even higher in the aftermath of her Budget debate speech. Margaret Thatcher was well aware of the growing buzz of interest in her favour. She also knew that support for her was gathering momentum in some unexpected quarters.

  TOFFS FOR THATCHER AND OTHER SURPRISES

  Margaret Thatcher’s earliest encouragement to run for the leadership did not come, as was erroneously claimed at the time, from a ‘peasants’ revolt’* within the party. Her first supporters were toffs, country gents and Treasury specialists.

  The first time I heard Margaret Thatcher’s name mooted as a leadership candidate was in July 1974. I had just played a game of squash on the House of Commons court with Peter Morrison, the twenty-nine-year-old Member for Chester. We were good friends.

  On this particular morning he was rather full of himself. ‘I’ve been seeing Margaret Thatcher’, he confided. ‘I told her that she must stand and that I could organise quite a few votes for her.’

  I expressed amazement, and asked what her response had been.

  ‘She said I was the first Member of the 1974 intake to say this to her’, replied Peter Morrison. ‘Then she said she had no chance. But in the next breath she asked me how much support I thought she had. I replied, “Well you’ve got the Fonthill vote. My father’s been saying he’s certain you’ll be our next leader.” ’8

  This information was intriguing. Peter’s father, Lord Margadale, was a legendary figure of influence in the Tory Party. As Major Sir John Morrison MP, he had been Chairman of the 1922 Committee for many years. He was one of the last of a vanishing breed of back-bench heavyweights known as ‘Knights of the Shires’. He was widely credited with delivering the emergence of Sir Alec Douglas-Home as leader in 1963 and the election of Ted Heath in 1965. ‘Major Shrewd’ was his nickname. He was the father of two current MPs, Peter and his elder brother Charlie, the Member for Devizes.

  Another source of Lord Margadale’s continuing influence was that he held court at Fonthill, his country estate in Wiltshire, where weekend house parties for political guests were a regular fixture. If the ‘Fonthill vote’ was really moving Margaret Thatcher’s way, it was an intriguing development. On the other hand, Peter Morrison might be getting the wrong end of the stick – which was the view I expressed.

  ‘Well, watch this space!’ was his cheery response. ‘Of course it’s early days, but some wise money’s going on La Thatcher.’

  The summer recess and the October election filled the space for both of us in the next three months. But back in the squash court again at the start of the new parliamentary session, we returned to the subject of Margaret Thatcher. By this time she was being talked about, but only as a long-odds runner, in the leadership stakes.

  ‘I’ve become the sort of White’s Club whip for her’, confided Peter. The title had a meaning in high Tory circles. In the 1970s, there were still about forty old-guard MPs who belonged to clubs in St James’s Street like White’s, Boodle’s, Brooks’s, Pratt’s and the Carlton. One of the better-connected Conservative whips (at the time, Spencer le Marchant) was tasked with digging these club members out of their dining rooms in time to vote in nocturnal divisions. So I understood the role Peter Morrison was describing, but thought it would be an impossible job to find supporters for Margaret Thatcher in these circles.

  ‘Difficult territory for you’, I said.

  ‘Oh, you’re out of touch, old boy’, he responded. ‘Quite a few of my chums are talking of coming into Margaret’s camp.’

  ‘Like who?’ I asked.

  ‘Like Robin Cooke, Alan Clark, Bill Benyon, Michael Ancram, Marcus Kimball, Julian Amery, Maurice Macmillan and Stephen Hastings. My father’s putting in a word for her with some of them, too.’9

  My amazement increased. None of these names were from Margaret Thatcher’s natural constituency. She was a lady of the suburbs, not the shires. These alleged supporters were men of old money, old regiments and old school ties.

 
; ‘Shurely shome mistake’, I responded, using a Private Eye catchphrase. ‘No way!’ insisted Peter. He knew his fellow-grandees and club members. As we towelled down in the squash-court dressing room, he managed to convince me that owners of great estates like Athelhampton (Robin Cooke), Highgrove (Maurice Macmillan), Englefield (Bill Beynon), Saltwood (Alan Clark), Lothian (Michael Ancram), Milton (Stephen Hastings) and Fonthill (Morrison family) were swinging Thatcher’s way.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because we think she’s the only one with balls, even though she’s a filly. Brains, too’, he replied. ‘And she is running well enough to end up the winner.’

  Peter Morrison in those days was lean, energetic and enthusiastic, with considerable gifts of persuasion. He quietly conjured at least thirty or more improbable votes out of the upper social echelons of the parliamentary party. While later backers of Thatcher (including Airey Neave) were dithering, Peter was working flat out for her. His role was underestimated at the time, but not by Margaret Thatcher, or by one or two of her below-the-radar confidants, such as Gordon Reece10 and the theoretically neutral Chief Whip, Humphrey Atkins.

  One effect of the early dedication of Peter Morrison was that it won him the enduring loyalty of the candidate. When she became Prime Minister in 1979, she appointed him Minister of State for Employment, and to a succession of further posts during the next eleven years of which the last, and most disastrous, was to be her Parliamentary Private Secretary at the time of the fateful leadership election in 1990. But the failure of his final service to her has obscured the success of his original initiative on her behalf. Peter’s progress started with ‘toffs for Thatcher’, sixteen years earlier. He was her first unequivocal backer, and she never forgot it.

  The toffs were joined by a more cerebral strand of support from a clever group of Tory MPs who specialised in Treasury matters. Their leader was John Nott, who just after the February 1974 election defeat met Denis Thatcher at a Burmah Oil board meeting. ‘Your wife could be Ted Heath’s successor’, said Nott. ‘My God, I hope you’re wrong’, replied Denis.11

  John Nott was one of the founder members of the Economic Dining Club, a group of Conservative MPs interested in Treasury issues who dined together every month in one another’s London homes. The other members included Nicholas Ridley, Jock Bruce-Gardyne, Enoch Powell, Peter Hordern and John Biffen. After being invited to some of these evenings as a guest, Margaret Thatcher was put up for membership in the early 1970s. ‘But she was blackballed on the grounds she talked for too long’, recalled Nott.12

  The blackballs were lifted in March 1974, so the future leader of the party became a regular attendee at the Economic Dining Club. She was ideologically sympathetic to the group’s enthusiasm for free markets, floating exchange rates, and the theories of monetarism. So, when her bandwagon started to inch forward, it was no surprise that the members of the club put their shoulders to its wheels.

  They were joined by a second wave of Tory Treasury specialists who participated alongside her on the 1974 Finance Bill Committee. Many of its stages took place on the floor of the House where Margaret Thatcher’s professionalism as a debunker and destroyer of government amendments was winning golden opinions, not least from the brightest new stars in the Finance Bill firmament. They included two future Chancellors, Norman Lamont and Nigel Lawson.

  Rave reviews for her leadership of the front-bench team also came from the newly elected Member for Croydon, John Moore, a future Treasury minister, who volunteered to be one of the first Thatcher canvassers. Another fan, playing a key role on the Finance Bill was my next-door parliamentary neighbour Peter Rees, the Member for Dover and Deal. He was a tax QC and a future Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He advised me and other members of the East Kent group of MPs that we should all back Margaret Thatcher for the leadership because ‘She is performing brilliantly, even on the most complicated and technical amendments’.13

  Since the Finance Bill was the centrepiece of parliamentary life in the opening weeks of the new House of Commons, the praise for Margaret Thatcher from its ablest debaters on the Tory team had a ripple effect throughout the entire party. Yet most of its backbenchers, including myself, still had no clear idea as to who they might vote for in a leadership election, if there was going to be one. However, the combination of toffs, Treasury specialists and Ted Heath haters was creating a degree of momentum for Margaret Thatcher, even if it was not yet strong enough to propel her to the front of the pack.

  A DEAL WITH EDWARD DU CANN

  Although Margaret Thatcher told Ted Heath that she intended to stand against him, her position was not a strong one. In the autumn of 1974 there were only a handful of believers, like Peter Morrison, who thought she could win the crown. Most Tory MPs were hedging their bets, half-heartedly paying lip service to the status quo while they waited for the emergence of a stronger challenger. But who would this be?

  With Willie Whitelaw refusing to enter the lists, and Keith Joseph withdrawing from them, a number of unlikely names were fleetingly mentioned as possible contenders. Most of them were slightly dated establishment grandees, such as Christopher Soames, Richard Wood, Hugh Fraser and Julian Amery. Heath was supremely confident of seeing off all of them, and Margaret Thatcher too. But one potential candidate worried the Leader’s praetorian guard. It was that of Edward du Cann, Chairman of the 1922 Committee, former Chairman of the Conservative Party and former Economic Secretary to the Treasury. His strongest qualification was that he was implacably opposed to Ted Heath and determined to put an end to his leadership of the party.

  In early November, Edward du Cann and all seventeen members of the Executive of the 1922 Committee were re-elected. This was a blow to Heath, who had been trying to engineer their defeat. For the first of many great divides between the leader and the 1922 Executive was that Heath did not want any kind of vote on his position, whereas the 1922 were determined to have a leadership election as soon as possible.

  Just how fraught this tension had become was clear at a meeting held in the leader of the opposition’s room on 12 November 1974. The Chief Whip, Humphrey Atkins, invited six of his senior colleagues to discuss the problem they knew would arise at the next full gathering of the 1922 Committee, on the following Thursday. These colleagues were Willie Whitelaw, Jim Prior, Francis Pym, John Peyton, Lord Hailsham and Lord Carrington.

  Hailsham kept a note of the discussion, which survives in his papers. It shows that all present recognised that the 1922 was going to demand either a vote of confidence in the leader or a leadership election. Jim Prior, reflecting Ted Heath’s view, wanted neither of these options. But the others thought this was an untenable position.

  ‘Willie expressed fear lest Ducann [sic] cd win on (2)’,14 wrote Hailsham. His full stop after ‘(2)’ made it clear that they were talking about du Cann winning in a second ballot. This was a forecast also being made on the backbenches.

  Although du Cann was clearly coming into the frame as a strong candidate, Carrington, Hailsham and Whitelaw said they could not work with him. Carrington reported on his lunchtime conversation with Harold Macmillan. Apparently the former Prime Minister was dismissive of du Cann, saying, ‘Why not ask Tiny Rowland straight away?’ This was a reference to du Cann’s controversial business ties with Roland ‘Tiny’ Rowland. The two were respectively Chairman and Chief Executive of Lonhro, a buccaneering trading company with extensive interests in Africa.

  Hailsham’s note of this 12 November meeting is revealing. For a start, it makes no mention of Margaret Thatcher, who was not being even considered by this group. It shows that the key figures in the Tory hierarchy regarded du Cann as the number one threat to Heath. He was seen as both the likely winner of a leadership election and as the arbiter of whether or not there would be such an election.

  As things turned out, du Cann quickly got his way on the election objective. He fought for and won a decision that there would be an early leadership contest. The date for the ballot was set for 4
February 1975, with nominations closing two weeks earlier.

  But who, apart from the determinedly immovable Ted would be nominated?

  Margaret Thatcher had declared her willingness to stand but was not yet certain to do so. Indeed, she was so uncertain about her prospects that in early December she offered to withdraw from the contest in order to let du Cann have a clear run. She made this offer of withdrawal to Nigel Fisher, the MP for Surbiton, and a member of the 1922 Committee. He was a mild, middle-of-the-road back-bencher who had developed a far from mild antipathy to Heath. This dated from an extraordinary display of rudeness to Fisher at a dinner party in 10 Downing Street when the Prime Minister told him he was ‘plain ignorant’ in front of other guests.15 It had been Heath’s stock in trade to hand out gratuitous insults to colleagues with whom he disagreed. It was hardly surprising that the insulted became the activists in the campaign to defenestrate him.

  In late November Nigel Fisher began gathering signatures among his colleagues to a letter urging Edward du Cann to stand for the leadership. After two days, twenty-five MPs including Airey Neave had signed it and another thirty indicated their willingness to do so. In the middle of this exercise, Fisher saw Margaret Thatcher. It is unlikely that she had anything over fifty potential supporters at this stage, and in any case she had no campaign manager to count her numbers. When she heard Nigel Fisher’s account of how well his canvassing for du Cann was going she said, ‘Please give Edward my firm assurance that I will withdraw my name if he decides to stand’.16

  Although it sounds out of character for Margaret Thatcher to back down from any sort of challenge, Edward du Cann was not surprised when Nigel Fisher brought him the news of her firm assurance. ‘I think it was a pure mathematical calculation on her part’, he has recalled. ‘I had the votes. She did not.’17

  Edward du Cann was a rare bird in the parliamentary aviary. But could he fly all the way to 10 Downing Street? He had some good credentials as a former Treasury minister and Party Chairman. He was a capable speaker and had formidable skills at chairing meetings. But he had enemies too, who engaged in a whispering campaign against him. They included Willie Whitelaw, who let it be known that he would never serve in a du Cann government; Peter Walker, a former business associate who murmured unhelpfully about du Cann’s City of London reputation; and above all Ted Heath, who had sacked him from the Party Chairmanship and excluded him from the 1970–1974 government.